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Healthy Living

There’s a myth being perpetuated by the media: if you eat right and exercise, you’ll be healthy. If you take care of your body, your body will take care of you.

If smoking, excess drinking, poor diet, and lack of exercise lead to poor health, then not smoking, not drinking, good diet, and a good exercise routine will lead to good health. Right?

It’s not true.

Sure, good health habits can help, but there are no guarantees. Sometimes people just have crummy luck. Or lousy genes. Or both. Sometimes I get mad at the unfairness of it all. I took care of myself, yet got stuck with this disease.

Pity party is over now. Time to move on. Given the current circumstances, what can be done to live as healthily as possible? Funny, but the answer hasn’t changed much:

eat right

exercise

get a good night’s sleep

maintain healthy height/weight ratio

positive attitude

refrain from smoking, playing in traffic, swimming with alligators, jumping off tall buildings…

take meds when prescribed

How to start?

I read recently that there are stages we go through:

recognizing that change is needed (people should exercise)

deciding we should change (I should exercise)

planning to change (I’m going to join a gym)

implementing the plan (I did join the gym, and now exercise every day before work)

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One thought on “Healthy Living”

I LOVE your first paragraph! I just wrote today about how I myself personalized these false assumptions, and felt that any worsening of my rheumatoid arthritis was somehow my fault. I now know that is not the case…but the idea still lives out there both on a personal level and a societal level.